Trevor Hoppe

Sociologist of sexuality, medicine & the law. Co-editor of The War on Sex. Author of Punishing Disease.Learn more.

Current Research

Welcome! As of Fall 2018, I am assistant professor of sociology at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. I came to UNCG from University at Albany and, prior to that, a postdoctoral fellowship in the Criminology, Law and Society Department at the University of California at Irvine. My research examines how punishment came to be a legitimate response to controlling HIV and disease more generally.

I recently published two books. The first, "The War on Sex," is a collection of essays co-edited with David Halperin analyzing the criminalization of sex. The second, "Punishing Disease," is a monograph explaining the rise of punitive responses to HIV and other infectious diseases. In 2018, "Punishing Disease" was awarded the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Studies.

The War on Sex

NOW AVAILABLE: The past fifty years are conventionally understood to have witnessed an uninterrupted expansion of sexual rights and liberties in the United States. This state-of-the-art collection tells a different story: while progress has been made in marriage equality, reproductive rights, access to birth control, and other areas, government and civil society are waging a war on stigmatized sex by means of law, surveillance, and social control. The contributors document the history and operation of sex offender registries and the criminalization of HIV, as well as highly punitive measures against sex work that do more to harm women than to combat human trafficking. They reveal that sex crimes are punished more harshly than other crimes, while new legal and administrative regulations drastically restrict who is permitted to have sex. By examining how the ever-intensifying war on sex affects both privileged and marginalized communities, the essays collected here show why sexual liberation is indispensable to social justice and human rights. Order your copy!

Punishing Disease

NOW AVAILABLE: From the very beginning of the epidemic, AIDS was linked to punishment. Calls to punish people living with HIV – mostly stigmatized minorities – began before doctors could even name the disease. Punitive attitudes towards AIDS prompted lawmakers around the country to introduce legislation aimed at criminalizing the behaviors of people living with HIV. Punishing Disease explains how this happened and with what consequences. Now that the door to criminalizing sickness is open, what other ailments will follow? With lawmakers moving to tack on additional diseases such as hepatitis and meningitis, the question is more than academic. Order your copy today!

Dissertation

In August 2014, I completed my PhD in Sociology and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan. My dissertation examined the application of HIV law in Michigan, particulary the felony disclosure statute that makes it illegal for HIV-positive people to have sex without first disclosing their HIV-positive status. You can read the entire dissertation here. In addition, articles based on it are published in Social Problems, Social Science & Medicine, and Punishment & Society.

November 2018

Friday, Nov. 2 Time TBD Columbia, SC

University of South CarolinaLocation TBA

Trevor Hoppe will speak about his book, Punishing Disease: HIV and the Criminalization of Sickness. The book investigates the consequences of using the criminal law to punish people living with disease. Thousands of people living with HIV across the U.S. have been imprisoned under HIV-specific criminal laws since the mid-1980s. In recent years, lawmakers in several states have begun considering whether they ought to extend those laws to include additional diseases such as hepatitis or meningitis. More details to follow.

March 2019

Thursday, March 21 4:00 PM Ann Arbor, MI

University of MichiganLocation TBA

Trevor Hoppe will speak about his book, Punishing Disease: HIV and the Criminalization of Sickness. The book investigates the consequences of using the criminal law to punish people living with disease. Thousands of people living with HIV across the U.S. have been imprisoned under HIV-specific criminal laws since the mid-1980s. In recent years, lawmakers in several states have begun considering whether they ought to extend those laws to include additional diseases such as hepatitis or meningitis. More details to follow.

Friday, March 224:00 PM Ann Arbor, MI

University of MichiganLocation TBA

David Halperin and Trevor Hoppe, co-editors of The War on Sex will speak on a panel about the book and its implications for sexuality scholarship and social activism. The event is hosted by the Institute for Research on Women and Gender. More details to follow.

Curriculum vitae

Below, find my current CV. Or click here to download the PDF if using mobile.

Praise for Punishing Disease and The War on Sex

What happens when a nation seduced by carceral solutions confronts a dreaded disease linked to sex and drugs? Trevor Hoppe’s thorough and well documented analysis explains how and why legislators, courts, public health officials, and police across the United States have “criminalized sickness” in the case of HIV/AIDS. "Punishing Disease" is a wake-up call about the dangers of punitive approaches to stopping the spread of disease.

Steven Epstein, author of "Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge" and "Inclusion: The Politics of Difference in Medical Research"

Sociologists have examined a plethora of human conditions that have been medicalized and treated as Illness. This well researched book examines a case that flips medicalization on its head: how HIV/AIDS, a devastating disease, became criminalized and with what consequences. Trevor Hoppe’s clear analysis sheds important new light on how the meanings of disease and illness have significant social, political and health consequences.

Peter Conrad, Brandeis University

Containing essays from some of the most insightful scholars and activists working on the front lines, "The War on Sex" is a vital tool for understanding how the regulation and criminalization of sex relate to our vital struggles in racial, economic, gender, and disability justice. Full of thoughtful, carefully researched essays, "The War on Sex" will support readers in classrooms and social movements to understand and strategize about the relationships among sex, criminalization, poverty, disability, and contemporary politics. We need this book right now.

Recent events just keep confirming, all too dismally, that the issues this collection takes upfrom sex offender registries and sex trafficking to HIV in public healthlink together as a major front of struggle in our time, often far from public view. Questioning some of the narratives of progress that are so widely echoed in the media and popular consciousness, "The War on Sex" will immediately meet the needs of academics and activists alike.

Michael Warner, author of "Publics and Counterpublics"

We are living through a little-discussed assault on sexual freedoms that is pioneering new, subtle, and insidious methods of social control: this is the disturbing and difficult-to-refute thesis of The War on Sex, a new collection of essays... Interdisciplinary in scope and inclusive of activist voices from outside the academy, the book is an essential introduction to a struggle for self-determination and sexual self-assertion that has been occurring behind mainstream social movements’ focus on dignity and respectability.

Order books.

The War on Sex

The past fifty years are conventionally understood to have witnessed an uninterrupted expansion of sexual rights and liberties in the United States. This state-of-the-art collection tells a different story: while progress has been made in marriage equality, reproductive rights, access to birth control, and other areas, government and civil society are waging a war on stigmatized sex by means of law, surveillance, and social control.

Punishing Disease: HIV and the Criminalization of Sickness

From the very beginning of the epidemic, AIDS was linked to punishment. Calls to punish people living with HIV – mostly stigmatized minorities – began before doctors had even settled on a name for the disease. Punitive attitudes towards AIDS prompted lawmakers around the country to introduce legislation aimed at criminalizing the behaviors of people living with HIV. Punishing Disease explains how this happened and its consequences. With the door to criminalizing sickness now open, what other ailments will follow? As lawmakers move to tack on additional diseases such as hepatitis and meningitis to existing law, the question is more than academic